


Passive Resistance

by CaptaInCynophobIa (ferryboats)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Crack, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Gen, Pacifism, Reincarnation, Smart Uzumaki Naruto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22448125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferryboats/pseuds/CaptaInCynophobIa
Summary: Uzumaki Naruto did not show up to his first day at the Academy. Or his second. On the third, the Sandaime Hokage scried for him with his crystal ball. He found him crouched beneath a tree in one of the numerous parks of Konohagakure no Sato, watching a train of ants.“I’ve decided I’m not going to the Academy,” the little boy announced, as if most little boys in a shinobi village didn’t want to become ninja.“If you aren’t going to be a shinobi, what will you do?”Naruto scratched his head. “I haven’t decided yet, but I’ve decided to be a pacifist.”Oh, no.A small chronologically linear collection of drabbles set in the same AU.
Relationships: Sarutobi Hiruzen & Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 82
Kudos: 1349
Collections: Dumb Bullshit to satiate my Escapism, Gammily’s Bookshelf, Real Good Shit





	1. Chapter 1

Uzumaki Naruto did not show up to his first day at the Academy. Or his second. On the third, the Sandaime Hokage scried for him with his crystal ball, wondering where that little rascal could have got to, and found him crouched beneath a tree in one of the numerous parks of Konohagakure no Sato. The six-year-old was watching a line of ants making their way to and from a portion of a crushed up rice cracker, looking without a care in the world.

With a long draw from his kiseru, and then an equally long smoky sigh, he considered whether he should send an ANBU to fetch the boy and take him to the Academy, or whether he should talk to the lad himself. One look at the paperwork stacked high in his inbox decided him, and he got to his feet to see if he could nip this issue in the bud.

The little boy was still at the park, enjoying the solitude granted him by the return of his peers to school with the start of the new term. The Hokage found him up in the branches of ones of the trees.

“What are you doing up there?”

Naruto beamed a sunny smile down upon him. “Hi, Jiji! Look, the birds grew up and left and now there’s a nest up here. There’s even some eggshell left. It’s blue.”

“So it seems,” the Hokage observed. He paused. Naruto did not notice, enraptured as he was now with a the empty chrysalis of a butterfly hanging from the stem of a leaf a little further along the branch. “Say, Naruto, isn’t there somewhere you’re meant to be?”

Naruto stopped. He frowned, and sat back on his heels, clearly thinking very hard. Then his expression cleared, and he shook his head. “Nope!”

“What about the Academy.”

“I’ve decided I’m not going to the Academy,” the little boy announced, as if most little boys in a shinobi village didn’t want to become ninja.

 _Oh, dear_. That wasn’t very hopeful talk, coming from the village’s resident jinchuuriki.

“What about becoming a shinobi?” the Hokage asked.

Naruto hopped down from the tree to stand in front of him, peering up at him with an incredibly earnest expression. “I thought about it, Jiji, after you said I could go. I really, really did. And I know you’re the best shinobi in the whole entire village. But don’t you think there are enough shinobi in the village already? What’s one more kunai when you have a thousand and a hundred more on order from the blacksmith?”

“If you aren’t going to be a shinobi, what will you do?”

Naruto scratched his head. “I haven’t decided yet, but I’ve decided to be a pacifist.”

 _Oh, no_.

On the fourth day, the Hokage sent an ANBU operative to drop Naruto off at his classroom. Unfortunately, Naruto had done his homework on pacifism. The ANBU operative gave a strained report on the jinchuuriki’s strategy of passive resistance, which had involved realising he was about to be taken to the Academy and flopping over like a puppet with its strings cut. He had had to be carried like a rag doll all the way to his classroom, and upon deliverance to his homeroom sensei he’d noodled limply onto the floor in the doorway.

“I do not think violence under any circumstance can be justified,” he’d told his bewildered and cross sensei, the ANBU operative, and the classroom at large, when he refused to get up and go to his seat. “However, since it is against my ethos to fight the fact I must be here, I will resist by failing to participate.”

The Sandaime Hokage could only hope his attention span would be shorter than his dedication to his newfound philosophy.

Alas, once Naruto set his course, he had an unfortunate tendency not to deviate. The council was furious.


	2. Chapter 2

It had taken Iruka an hour to track Naruto down, after he’d finished up with this term’s exams for the genin-hopefuls. He found the boy feeding the small handful of homeless dogs on his street, smiling and greeting each one by name. The dogs were looking in remarkably good condition for strays, glossy-coated and bright-eyed and wagging-tailed. They had the typical scuffs and scars of animals that had been living for a long time on the streets, but there was nothing new.

“Hi, Iruka-sensei,” Naruto said brightly. “What’re you doing here?”

“You missed graduation.”

Naruto’s expression became one of good-mannered bemusement. “I did,” he agreed. “There wasn’t much point, was there?”

Iruka tried not to look as perturbed as he felt, but it didn’t work. “There was a point. You passed.” He withdrew the hitai-ate from one of the pockets of his flak-jacket and held it out.

Understanding bloomed in Naruto’s eyes. “Ah, I see. This farce is to continue, then?”

“It is.”

An order from up on high.

Naruto was to be the first genin to graduate from the Academy who knew no taijutsu, had never handled a weapon, had never moulded chakra and let alone shown any competence in the Academy three. He had completed no homework or class assignments, never taken part in any of the fitness tests. Every single one of his scores was nil. There had never been a student with grades so abysmal – usually they would’ve been flunked out within the first term at the Academy.

But Iruka had not been allowed to fail Naruto.

“Congratulations.” He tried to hand the hitai-ate to Naruto, but the boy made no move to take it.

“I don’t want a hitai-ate, thank you.”

Iruka fought back the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. He had a terrible headache coming on. “As a shinobi of Konohagakure no Sato, you are obliged to wear this on your person for identification purposes.”

Naruto took the hitai-ate, but Iruka knew it was only because he refused to argue.

The boy looked at it, thoughtfully. “What if I were to lose this?”

“A lot of paperwork. And probably some sort of official reprimand,” Iruka replied, and he knew with complete certainty that by the time he’d turned and walked to the end of the street, Naruto would have conveniently misplaced his new hitai-ate.

“Acceptable,” Naruto decided.

“Naruto, a lost hitai-ate could be picked up by someone and used to impersonate a Konoha shinobi. Losing one is a very serious security risk.”

Naruto appeared undeterred. “I know that, Iruka-sensei! It would be morally reprehensible for me to put other people at the risk of harm by my deliberate action. Unless I lose it somewhere _no one_ will find it.”

Iruka gave up.


	3. Chapter 3

“Introductions!” Kakashi announced on top of the roof of the Academy. “Your name, your likes, dislikes, hobbies, dreams for the future, that sort of thing.”

None of the three children sitting before him said anything for a long moment. Then the pink one, the one he knew had some sort of infatuation with the Uchiha, said: “Why don’t you go first and show us how it’s done, sensei?”

So Kakashi gave them both a lot, and almost nothing, depending on what they took from his words. They’d have to be canny to work it out though. “Blondie, you next. Also, where’s your hitai-ate.”

Sensei’s son shrugged, an unrepentant expression on his face. “I lost it, sorry.”

_ Kami forbid _ . The boy was an idiot. “Okay, we’ll deal with that in a minute. Your introduction.”

The boy grinned. “I’m Uzumaki Naruto, y’know! I’m a pacifist. I like ramen, and the three minutes it takes for instant ramen to cook, because I like having time to think about things! I dislike violence of all sorts, and don’t think it is an acceptable solution to any problem. I also dislike being forced into a career path where I will be asked to commit atrocities for the state. My hobbies are trying new foods and helping people and growing plants. And my dream for the future is to be an ambassador for world peace!”

No, Kakashi decided. An idiot only at a glance.

Uzumaki Naruto was rebelling against the system that had made him a weapon on the day he was born.

He was a breath of fresh air compared to the Uchiha, who announced moments later that his sole ambition in life was to get strong enough to commit fratricide, and the pink kunoichi-hopeful who was infatuated with him.

Kakashi changed his mind again the next day when the brat didn’t even turn up for the bell test, and when hunted down and rather than come to the training ground willingly he’d done something he’d heard other ANBU members complain of viscerally – he’d flopped over and refused to move, making Kakashi have to carrying him by the scruff of his neck. But that wasn’t even satisfying because usually carrying genin around by their scruffs had them yowling and struggling in indignation, but Naruto just hung there, a limp deadweight.

And then, rather than participate in the bell test, he’d wandered home again to make himself lunch.

Teamwork couldn’t happen if one member of the team wasn’t there!

After the bell rang, Kakashi fetched him again and tied him to the stump, but by then he’d already eaten and he promptly fell asleep in the sun. And slept all the way through Sasuke and Sakura’s second attempt at getting the bells.

“I would send you back to the Academy,” Kakashi snarled at the three of them, at the end of the day. “ _None_ of you are fit to be shinobi.”

“I know,” Naruto said. “I very specifically do not want to be a shinobi. But you have to pass us anyway?”

“Sadly, yes.” Kakashi saw no harm in confirming something the kid already knew.

“For political reasons.”

No, this kid wasn’t an idiot. He knew exactly what was going on. His subversion of the norms was carefully calculated.

“Also, sadly.”

“Because Sasuke’s the last loyal Uchiha, and I’m the jinchuuriki.”

“Sadly— wait, _who told you_?”

Naruto continued blithely, unconcerned by the fact that he had let slip an S-Ranked secret about himself. “And it would be a waste of village resources not to turn us into tools for its use. I will not be honed into a weapon to be turned on whoever the Hokage or the council wishes, though. I will not have my life dictated by power-hungry killers.”

And – Kakashi noticed this was surprise – Sasuke was looking at Naruto with something other than disdain. The Uchiha looked, for the first time since Kakashi had met him, not broody or outright angry, but curious. There were gears ticking away in his head, a dawning realisation opening up his features.

Oh, no.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah i dont have more of this beyond
> 
> Hokage: Team Six?  
> Jounin-sensei: Fail  
> Hokage: Team Seven [fixes Kakashi with a gimlet eye thinking: if you fail them, Kakashi, so help me...]  
> Kakashi: Fail  
> Hokage: What.  
> Kakashi, handing over his own hitai-ate, as well as Sasuke's and Sakura's: What can I tell you, they all unanimously decided not to be shinobi. Sasuke's going to tear down the Uchiha Compound to start up a tomato farm. Naruto's already halfway through his manuscript on ethical philosophy. Sakura has decided to enter the medical training programme at the hospital to become a civilian doctor  
> Hokage: Kakashi what--  
> Kakashi: I'm tendering my immediate resignation as a shinobi. The Hatake have historically been farmers and I offered Sasuke my assistance with his new venture into agriculture  
> Hokage: WHAT  
> Kakashi: Bye [Poofs away]
> 
> if anyone else wants to take this idea and run with it, go ahead


	4. Chapter 4

“Team Six?”

“Fail.”

Not unexpected.

Also not unexpected was Hatake coming in at the last minute with a haunted look in his single visible eye. He had been testing his beloved dead sensei’s son and the younger brother of an ANBU teammate who, ostensibly, went mad and slaughtered his entire clan in one night.

Hatake had been told, very firmly, that Team Seven had to pass.

The Hokage fixed him with a gimlet eye, as he called out: “Team Seven.”

There was a pause so long it bordered on being dramatic before Hatake shook himself out of whatever stupor had come over him. “Fail.”

Murmurs broke out amongst the other jounin senseis.

The Hokage frowned, deeply. “We will talk in my office after this is over. Go and wait for me there.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama.” Hatake bowed, and left.

“Team Eight.”

“Pass,” Yuuhi announced, but she seemed unsettled now.

“Team Nine is still in circulation. Team Ten?”

Asuma was chewing thoughtfully on his cigarette, staring out the window Hatake had left through. “Pass,” he said, distractedly.

When the Hokage got up to his office, there were three hitai-ate sitting on his desk. For a moment, he thought Kakashi might have killed the children accidentally, but no, there was no blood either on the masked jounin or the hitai-ate. He turned to the jounin, who was waiting at attention before the desk. He didn’t look nearly haunted enough to have brutally murdered three children.

“You were told to pass them.”

“Respectfully, Hokage-sama, I cannot teach children who do not wish to be shinobi.”

Children. Plural.

The Sandaime Hokage suddenly had the unpleasant sensation of something cold crawling down his spine. An awful, terrible thought had occurred to him. Surely not, though. So far both Sakura-chan and Sasuke-kun had been resistant to the nonsense Naruto had espoused, even though they’d been in his class. The Hokage had hoped that perhaps Naruto and Sasuke might develop a bit of healthy rivalry, like Orochimaru and Jiraiya had…

Kakashi was removing his hitai-ate.

Why was Kakashi removing his hitai-ate?

Surely not for an assassination attempt.

Both of them were aware of the ANBU shifting in the rafters.

Kakashi tossed his own hitai-ate onto the desk with the others. “Respectfully, Hokage-sama, team seven are not fit to graduate to genin. They fail. I will not test them again. I resign.”

He was one of the best shinobi in the village! He was also, as of this moment, the last Sharingan user left in Konoha, since Sasuke had never unlocked his. “You cannot.”

“I have fulfilled my mandatory service in contract to the village several times over,” Kakashi replied. He smiled with his eyes, left eye squeezed shut, right eye crinkled. “I thought I might try my hand at tomato farming.”

At that moment, they were interrupted by a different ANBU operative bursting urgently through the window. “Hokage-sama, the Uchiha district is on fire!”


	5. Chapter 5

Orochimaru, carrying a dark parasol that cast his face in shadows and dressed in a fine kimono, found Uchiha Sasuke elbow-deep in animal manure, wearing a broad-brimmed straw-hat, sweating in the Fire Country sunshine as he worked to prepare a field for sowing. Sasuke was not alone. A couple of fields over, Sakumo’s brat was digging an irrigation channel and lining it with charred stones that had once belonged to the foundation of the gutted remains of a nearby house.

Nearby, a couple of civilian children of a similar age to the last Uchiha were sifting through ashes for bits and pieces of metal, like rusting nails and warped hinges, which they were collecting in a bright yellow wheelbarrow.

Apart from the main house and a couple of buildings surrounding it, the entire Uchiha district had been razed to the last blade of grass. All that was left was the indication of where roads and alleys had once been, and the odd blackened wooden beam reaching up into the sky.

Where Sasuke was _not_ was in the Forest of Death, participating in the second part of the Chuunin Exams.

Sakumo’s brat had noticed him. Orochimaru could tell by the way he had tensed and turned his head to keep Orochimaru in his peripheral vision.

And yet, he did nothing.

Curious.

“Did you want something, kunoichi-san?” Sasuke asked, at length, when Orochimaru did not go away and Kakashi failed to do anything about it. Good to know his disguise fooled some people, the snake sannin supposed.

“What happened here?”

Sasuke looked at him a bit like someone would look at someone particularly stupid, or perhaps ignorant. “My brother went insane and killed the whole clan.”

“Just recently?”

Sasuke snorted, turning his attention back to the earth. “No, years ago.”

“It looks like there was a fire recently.”

“Yeah. I burned it down for land for my tomatoes. Not like anyone but me was even living here.”

His _tomatoes_? “You’re a farmer, then? Not a shinobi?”

Sasuke’s expression became suspicious. “Something wrong with farming? Being a shinobi isn’t all that grand. They’re all just glorified murderers anyway.”

“It just seems odd that you don’t want revenge, to me, Uchiha-san. For what your brother did.”

The little bark of laughter that Sasuke gave was as dry and arid as the desert in Wind. “Why? It won’t undo anything. It won’t bring anyone back. Violence just begets more violence. I won’t be a part of perpetuating that cycle.”

“You’re one of the last living users of the Sharingan. Surely this is a waste of your talents?”

Sasuke’s face did something complicated. “I’m not going to be turned into a weapon for anyone to wield on the off chance that I _might_ develop the Sharingan,” he growled at the soil beneath his fingers.

Ah.

Disappointing.

“Fair enough, Uchiha-san,” Orochimaru said, and left. An untrained child who had not even managed to manifest his clan’s kekkei genkai was of little use to him. It was such a shame. If he’d turned out anything like Itachi, Sasuke would have had such potential…

Never mind. He had other machinations to tend to.


	6. Chapter 6

“Oh, _gross_. Are you perving on women in the onsen?”

Jiraiya startled so badly he dropped his binoculars. They fell from the high tree branch he where was crouched to the earth far below, the lenses shattering with a crashing of class and plastic. He spun about to find a boy dressed in a civilian T-shirt and shorts standing on the branch above him, soft sunlight filtering down through the leaves of the tree to highlight the bright blonde of his hair.

“You’re interrupting my research,” he growled at the brat.

Minato’s kid, the civilian. Jiraiya tried not to think about it. Sensei had explained that Naruto hadn’t wanted to follow in either of his parents’ footsteps to become a shinobi.

The boy was scowling, deeply. “You know you’re committing an offense against their persons, those women, peeping at them in the bath without consent for your own sexual gratification?”

Jiraiya surged upwards to clap his hand over Naruto’s mouth, for the boy had never seemed to learn volume control when it came to speaking. “Shush! They might hear you!”

Naruto drew back, then resorted to licking his hand to get away, and then continued on in the same vein: “Is it not my moral obligation, knowing now that one party has been wronged by another, to inform the first of these transgressions against them?”

“No!”

“That was a hypothetical question, pervert. I know you’re a shinobi and all, and information gathering is a part of your career, but this is gross on a whole other level, y’know. You should be arrested.” A sudden look of enlightenment appeared on his face. “You should be _arrested_ ,” Naruto repeated. “There are laws in place to deal with this sort of thing. Sure, they’re enforced by shinobi, who can get a little, uh, rough… If violence occurs to your person as a part of the arresting process, and I’m the person who prompts the arrest even if it is then performed by other parties… But you were perving and that’s pretty gross… A quandary…”

“Don’t do it, brat.”

But a vulpine grin had appeared on Naruto’s face, and there was a mischievous glitter in his blue, blue eyes. “Help! Help! Pervert! Bad touch! Pervert! I need a shinobi! Help!”

“Why are you like this?” Jiraiya asked, just before a half-dozen jounin and chuunin, as well as a couple of ANBU who must have been nearby, materialised around them.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How many lives does Naruto remember? Prorbably more than are mentioned here.

The brat that had suddenly appeared within the Kyuubi’s seal looked disgustingly unconcerned by its circumstances, something that the Kyuubi decided to immediately rectify. It rushed the bars of its cage and slammed into them with such force the mental landscape around them shook, snarling and slavering, nose pressed between two of the bars. Its saliva foamed in the water, its eyes shone red in the darkness, and its great teeth gleamed.

The brat’s hair was ruffled by the great puffs of its hot and rancid breath, but it was unafraid as it stepped forward, toward the raging Kyuubi.

The little brat came to a stop just outside the reach of the great fox’s claws as it crashed its forepaws into the gates, roaring.

And still the brat just looked on with mild amusement.

“You are supposed to be terrified,” the Kyuubi growled at him. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Of course I do!” the brat replied. “You’re sealed in my belly. And once upon a time, I helped Mito seal you into herself and become the first jinchuuriki.”

“ ** _HASHIRAMA?_** ” No! How? The Kyuubi was going to escape this cage and kill him—!

“My name’s Naruto, now, Kurama.”

“HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME, WORM?”

The brat smiled, and it was a soft, gentle smile. “My brother and I witnessed your birth.”

“… _Ashura_?”

**Author's Note:**

> look im not going to lie i imagined naruto remembered being hashirama reincarnated, hating how the village system turned out, and trolling everyone when i wrote this but smart!naruto making a similar observation works too


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